Want some motivation to work out? Forget losing weight or getting healthy since there's now a pill for that. No, the best motivation for doing things that you don't want to do is cold hard cash, and that's what GymPact promises to give you in exchange for your suffering.
Whenever you go to the gym, you can check in with the free GymPact app on your GPS-enabled phone. Work out for at least 30 minutes, and at the end of the week, GymPact will reward you with real money (usually a couple bucks, at least) via Paypal. Awesome!
So what's the downside? It's simple: if you want to be eligible for rewards, you also have to pledge a certain amount of money each week for the exercising you intend to do. If you skip out on a day when you were intending to go to the gym, GymPact takes that money (a minimum of $5 per day you miss) and uses it to pay off all of the people who weren't such lazy bums. GymPact itself skims 3% off the top, but the rest of it gets split evenly among GymPact users who did go to the gym and earned rewards.
The nice thing about GymPact (at least, if you're trying to get yourself to exercise), is that it comes with both positive and negative motivation: go to the gym, make money and get healthier. Don't go to the gym, lose money and pack on the chub. It's win-win, unless (and this is a big unless) everyone involved in GymPact manages to go to the gym all the times they're supposed to, and then it's win-lose since nobody gets paid. And all of a sudden I feel like there's no point to exercise unless it pays me money. Sigh. Thanks, GymPact, for ruining my motivation.
GymPact, via TechCrunch
